Consequences #6 — Vicky

Everyone’s allowed to care except me.

In my final year at uni­ver­sity in Brad­ford, I man­aged to wrangle my way into a shared house with a hand­ful (oh how apt!) of friends with whom I’d shared halls of res­id­ence in my first year. It was a grand house; all bal­conies and bal­us­trades, stained glass and long, wind­ing staircases.

One even­ing, as we sat on the assort­ment of bean­bags and booze-stained mat­tresses watch­ing the latest epis­ode of East­Enders, one of my fel­low house­mates burst into the lounge and announced that some scally had shinned up the drain­pipe and smashed her bed­room win­dow in order to make off with an old pair of train­ers, a Stone Roses CD, someone’s engage­ment ring (kept in an upstairs room for safety) and the ste­reo — all thrown aim­lessly into a gym bag. We all made sym­path­etic noises and went back to our mind­less viewing.

A couple of days after­wards, they tried their luck again but had their efforts thwarted by a dec­or­at­ive axe which had been hanging on the sill above the win­dow through which they’d tried to squeeze. Since they refused to give up, they cheekily smashed their way through our front door and attemp­ted to crow­bar their way into one of the down­stairs rooms.

Lay­ing low for sev­eral weeks, our furt­ive thieves gave us plenty of reason to feel com­pla­cent; but just in case they tried to barge their way through our new front door, we rigged up an early warn­ing sys­tem. A house full of social sci­ence stu­dents doesn’t guar­an­tee any form of elec­tronic siren set-up, so we made do with the resources avail­able — an iron­ing board propped up against the front door.

I was alone in the house that night, drift­ing off to sleep to the sounds of my per­sonal ste­reo and obli­vi­ous to the fact that the front door remained ajar next to the remains of an old iron­ing board which had scared our intruders off without so much as a CD.

Time passed once more; strategy was dis­cussed over pasta in mush­room soup, and we vowed to patrol the house like never before. Riot­ous activ­ity over homemade Christ­mas crack­ers one even­ing ensured that our bungling ban­dits once more blundered their way into another of the down­stairs rooms and made off with a selec­tion of atro­cious vinyl from our res­id­ent would-be DJ — whilst leav­ing his expens­ive desks in full view and yet untouched.

We were start­ing to feel rather like the Key­stone Cops; these people were hardly pro­fes­sion­als, yet they’d man­aged to dodge us at each turn by strik­ing at the heart of the stu­dent timetable — namely when we were all throw­ing alco­hol down our throats.

One even­ing, just before our ten­ancy was up, we were super­vising a couple of Ren­tokil employ­ees in one of the kit­chens when we heard some activ­ity out­side. A couple of the lads bounded down­stairs and raced through the front door in order to check out the caco­phony and found, to their amazement, two of the hap­less burg­lars attempt­ing to rid one of the girls’ cars of its bat­tery. It was an old Aus­tin Metro which was on its last legs, and we were unsure whether to laugh or cry, but the embar­rass­ment caused by us catch­ing a couple of scal­lies break­ing into The Yel­low Peril was enough to keep them away.

Six burg­lar­ies, all mak­ing vic­tims of the other mem­bers of the house whilst my pos­ses­sions remained untouched, ensured that I was left out of any dis­cus­sions relat­ing to com­pens­a­tion and apo­lo­gies from the landlord.

Take my record collection.